Maths
by HermioneGirl96
Summary: It turns out that Simon Snow is good at something after all.
1. Introduction

**Disclaimer: Everything here worth owning is Rainbow Rowell's.**

"Penny?" I ask as soon as she walks through the door of our flat. I have the fewest classes on Wednesdays, so I'm always home first. "Do you think I'd be good at maths?"

Penny sets down her rucksack and starts unbuttoning her coat. "Maybe. What makes you ask?"

"A bloke in my Introduction to Environmental Studies class was talking today about how he's glad he's finally found something science-y where you write essays instead of lab reports or equations. And it got me thinking—if maths isn't about writing essays, maybe I'd be good at it. I mean, I'm pants at everything involving words, so maybe I'd do better with numbers." I rake a hand through my hair. "Either that or I really am just stupid, like Baz always used to say."

Penny takes a bunch of grapes out of the refrigerator and rinses them off in the sink. "You're not stupid," she says, but it sounds reflexive, not genuine. "Did you like maths in primary school?"

I shrug. "I guess so. I don't really remember."

Penny puts the grapes in a bowl and comes to join me on the sofa. I take a grape, but, instead of eating it, I say, "I'm worried because I think it might be too late to start maths. I mean, I haven't taken any since primary school. And it's not like there's Intro to Maths courses at uni, the way there's Intro to Environmental Studies or Intro to Spanish. They assume you already know calculus, at least."

Penny frowns, eats a grape, and then says, "You can't be the only Watford student ever to want to study maths. I can call my mother and ask what people have done before, if you like."

"That might be helpful, yeah," I agree.

"Do you want me to do it now?"

I swallow. "Um, all right."

Penny whips out her mobile, unlocks it, and dials. Then she puts it on speaker and holds it between us.

I don't really expect Mrs Bunce to pick up, since she's busy being headmistress, but, after the phone rings twice, we hear her voice from the phone's speakers: "Hello, Penelope. How are you?"

"I'm doing well, Mum," Penny replies. "I'm calling because Simon has a question. He's wondering if it would be possible for him to study maths, since he didn't take any maths courses while he was at Watford. I'm assuming someone has done this before. What did they do?"

"Well, the first step out be to get a tutor," Mrs Bunce says. "There would be a lot of catching up to do. It's true that we don't provide students with a very smooth transition from Watford to a Normal university, particularly if they want to study something in the sciences, and that's something your father and I have discussed many times."

"But it would be possible for Simon to study maths?"

"Just as possible as it was for Dr Wellbelove to study medicine. If he's serious about it, I would recommend that he talk to the head of the mathematics department and get a tutor."

"Thanks, Mum."

"Did you need anything else, Penelope? Because I do have work to get back to."

"You can get back to work; that was all," says Penny."

"All right. Tell Simon good luck from me." The line goes dead.

I look at Penny. "This means emails, doesn't it."

"And then an actual meeting, probably," she replies.

I pull a throw pillow over my head. (Throw pillows were Penny's idea.)

"Come on, Simon. I'll help you draft it if you want."

I set the pillow down. "Can I have a couple of days to sort out what I want?"

Penny agrees to that, picks up her rucksack, and heads up to her room. I think she relishes not sharing a room with Trixie anymore. For my part, I get out my mobile and text Henry, the Normal from my literature class who I've become friends with: _What's your opinion on maths?_

I eat another few grapes before I get an alert that he's replied. His text says, _Bollocks. Why do you think I'm studying literature?_

 _Okay, but what's maths like?_ I write back. _We didn't have maths at my school._

 _Lucky,_ he replies. Then: _Numbers. And then letters that stand for numbers._

 _No essays?_ I ask.

 _None. My cousin who studies maths talks about proofs sometimes, but they don't sound like essays._

 _I think maybe I'd be okay at that, since I'm shit at essays._

 _No you're not,_ he writes. Thirty seconds later, he sends a second text: _Okay, maybe you are._ He would know, since we'd worked together on a peer-editing day. Then he sends a third text: _Still cool, though. :)_

I don't know if he's flirting with me. He seems pretty gay in person—everything from his clothes to his laugh—but then, Baz mostly _doesn't_ , so maybe I'm not a good judge. I've never mentioned Baz to Henry, so he has no reason to assume I'm not straight (unless _I_ seem gay, I guess), but he also might assume I'm single. Simple compliments could be a way of feeling me out. Or maybe not. Maybe I should talk to my therapist about how I assume everybody's got an agenda. Or maybe I'm just overreacting to absolutely everything.

I text back, _Thanks_ , just as Baz walks in the door. He's allowed to come in without knocking between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. if the door is unlocked—that's the compromise he and Penny have worked out.

I turn to face the door. "Baz? Do you think I'd be good at maths?"

Baz takes off his coat and joins me on the sofa, setting his bag at his feet. "Well, it's not too word-heavy," he says, "so maybe?" He takes a grape and bites into it, fangs popping as he does.

"That's exactly what I thought," I say. Then I unlock my mobile and show him the texts from Henry. "Do you think he's flirting with me?"

Baz frowns as he reads the texts, I think (it's still hard for me to tell expressions when his fangs are out), but it's more of a thinking frown than a displeased frown. I think. "Maybe?" he says. "I'd need more information. Do you think he's gay?"

"Probably."

"Why?" He pops another grape into his mouth.

"He dresses well. His laugh—I don't know, it just sounds kind of gay. But I missed _you_ being gay, so obviously my gaydar is fucked."

Baz smirks around his fangs. "Right. Does he compliment you often?"

I think back. "Not really. He called my coat nice the first time I wore it."

Baz shrugs. "Probably straight." He eats another grape and then says, "Intro to being queer, Snow: assume everyone else is straight. Doing otherwise just sets you up for heartbreak."

I take his hand. "I didn't assume _you_ were straight, and that worked out all right."

He arches one perfect eyebrow. "Just all right?"

"It worked out bloody brilliantly," I amend before kissing his ear. Baz's eyes flutter shut and he moans a little as I continue. I first figured out that ears are sensitive back when I was dating Agatha, but her reactions were never anywhere near this satisfying.

"Aleister _Crowley_ , Snow," Baz says when I stop. "Don't do that when my fangs are out. _Merlin_."

I grin at him. "Can you put your fangs in so we can take this to my room?"

Baz concentrates for a moment, face screwing up, and his fangs retract back into his mouth. "All right. But only for half an hour." He gets out his mobile, and I know he's setting a timer. He's explained to me that he can scarcely trust himself where I'm concerned, and that all the mental energy that would otherwise go toward time management gets directed toward not biting me. _And I do intend to keep placing top of the class,_ he always adds.

I don't know what that's like. Feeling smart. Trying to reach—or hold on to—the top spot rather than just hoping to avoid the bottom. If I try maths, though, and if that goes well, then maybe someday I'll find out how Baz and Penny feel.

No. If I turn out to be good at something, it'll be like finding out I had magic. I'll treasure it more than anyone else because I have so much experience being without it.

Baz and I manage to fit quite a bit of fun into half an hour, and then it's homework until dinner time. It's my day to cook dinner, which makes me happy, even though I'm a little stressed about this literature essay and wish I could work on it uninterrupted all afternoon and evening. (Who am I kidding, it'll be shit no matter what.) But the fact is that I'm a better cook than either Penny or Baz, and I also enjoy it more. Since it's a weeknight, I throw together a stir fry rather than bothering with something complicated. When we eat, though, Penny takes one bite of the pork and sighs happily. "How do you _do_ this?" she asks. "I can never get it this tender."

I shrug. "I just do, I guess."

"You don't need to search for something you're good at," Penny says. "This. This is it."

"You think I should be a cook?"

"Why not?" Penny asks. "You used to say you'd like to herd goats with Ebb."

Baz snorts. "You were _serious_ about that?"

"I didn't think I _had_ a future, when I said stuff like that," I shoot back.

Baz's smirk softens the tiniest bit, but all he says is, "Neither did I, and I never joked about doing anything that stupid."

Penny rolls her eyes and changes the subject, and the rest of dinner passes uneventfully.

I've almost gotten used to Baz eating with us, almost stopped appreciating the miracle that is my vampire boyfriend eating with anyone at all. Almost. But not quite.

 **A/N: Reviews, favourites, and follows are lovely. More chapters are on the way!**


	2. Methods

**Disclaimer: Rainbow Rowell created these delightful characters (except Matilda).**

 **A/N: Gosh, I'm really sorry if the first few paragraphs of this chapter sound like an ad for Khan Academy. I swear I don't work for them; I just think Simon would like them. Also, I haven't researched the British school system for this fic, so I'm going by what I've picked up from consuming British media. I'm sorry for the mistakes, and I'll fix them if you point them out, but I decided to be lazy for this story.**

I want to try some maths on my own before talking to anyone else about what to do next, so, when I finally call it quits on the literature essay, I immediately Google "how to teach yourself maths," but that's mostly tips about habits and strategies rather than actual content, so next I Google "maths tutorials." This time, after a few ads (I really should take Penny and Baz's advice and get adblock; I just never seem to remember), I see a result labeled "Khan Academy: Free Online Courses, Lessons & Practice." I click on it and wind up at a website offering more knowledge for free than I thought existed outside of Penny and Wikipedia.

I click around for a while on various menus, trying to figure out how to assess myself and determine what I already know and whether learning is easy. I can see that the website operates on the American system, referring to "high school" rather than "secondary school" and offering help with the SAT rather than A-levels or GCSEs. I try to remember what Penny's mentioned about the American system so that I can guess at where I would have left off at the end of primary school. Finally, I find myself on the page for sixth grade maths, which offers to teach me about percentages, negative numbers, variables, and inequalities. Percentages I know (who doesn't?), and I've experienced plenty of variability and inequality in my life (the former thanks to the Humdrum and the latter thanks to Baz), but negative numbers—hmm. I maybe remember them from primary school? I click on "Intro to Negative Numbers" and watch the video. I immediately like the warm, comforting, American voice that narrates the video, and the instruction is clear and easy to follow. I don't remember the material from primary school (not that that's saying much—I remember blessedly little from my pre-Watford life), but it's easy to understand now.

I do the practice problems and watch a few more videos before bed. The next day, I don't have as much homework, so I spend a few hours watching Khan Academy videos, doing practice problems, and learning maths. At some point I realize that I'm getting everything right. I figure that might be because the material is so easy, so I skip ahead to Geometry, but I get the same result, except where Sal Khan mentions algebra, which I've missed entirely. But everything that I _am_ learning just makes sense. It clicks. It feels easy.

Dinner is just Penny and me—Fiona just got back from a vampire-hunting mission and Baz wanted to see her—and I ask Penny to help me draft an email to the head of the maths department at our university. Together, we write,

 _Dear Professor Wilson,_

 _My name is Simon Snow and I am a student interested in studying maths. The problem is that I attended an unusual secondary school and have not completed much coursework in maths. May I meet with you to discuss how I might catch up so that I could take university maths courses starting next year?_

 _Sincerely,_

 _Simon Snow_

"'Unusual'?" I ask Penny.

"Do you have a better idea?" Penny retorts.

"Agatha always said 'religious fundamentalist,'" I reply.

"And you would listen to Agatha over me _why_?"

I shrug. "Agatha said magic is like a religion."

Penelope huffs. "No it's not. Magic just _is_."

"I'm pretty sure that's what religious people would say, too, Penny."

Penny and I haggle over terminology for a little longer before sending the email off. Professor Wilson writes me back the next day and tells me to come to his office on Tuesday morning of next week. When I do, he greets me by name and asks how far along I've gotten in maths. I marathoned the Khan Academy pre-algebra and algebra videos over the weekend, so I tell him I've got a solid handle on algebra (which is only maybe true, but I want to seem as prepared as I possibly can) but have only a little bit of experience with geometry.

"You may as well be thirteen," he growls, his tone reminding me of me. Then he goes on a rant that includes terms like "Tory government," "American-style religious exemptions," and "declining standards," before finally turning to me again and saying, "I'll email our education students who aspire to teach maths, and we'll see if anyone is willing to tutor you. You'll have to pay them, though."

I nod. "Of course, sir."

He raises his eyebrows. "'Sir'?"

"I didn't learn maths at my secondary school," I reply, "but I did learn elocution and basic manners."

"For Christ's sake. It's the twenty-first century! You need maths and science, not elocution and deportment! I have half a mind to ring your headmaster."

"He died my final year, sir."

Professor Wilson's expression softens a bit at that. "Oh. Well. On your way, Mr Snow. Expect an email soon."

I see myself out, and, sure enough, I get an email from Professor Wilson the next day, saying that a maths education student named Matilda Smith (email address provided) would be happy to tutor me for an appropriate fee. I email Matilda and explain my progress—I'm midway through geometry by this point, to the detriment of my homework for my actual classes; it just feels so good to be getting something right for once.

I like Matilda as soon as I meet her. She has frizzy brown hair and big glasses, and she shakes my hand when I arrive at our first tutoring session the next week.

"You say you haven't done maths since primary school," she says, "but I find that hard to believe. Was your curriculum just bad?"

I shake my head. "No, my secondary school honestly didn't have maths courses. It was kind of . . . religious fundamentalist. Our classes were really not Normal."

Matilda's eyes get huge behind her glasses. "What did you _take_?"

Baz could dodge this question without looking like he was hiding anything, but I'm not that smooth. "I'd rather not talk about it," I say. "I'm glad I escaped and get to go to a Normal university." That's what Agatha would say, I'm sure. "Anyway, is it relevant? I thought we were here so you could teach me maths."

Matilda sits back. "We are. So how much maths have you done, really?"

"I remember about through fractions and decimals from primary school," I reply. "I've been watching a bunch of online tutorial videos in the last couple weeks, so I've been trying to learn algebra and geometry, but I haven't studied them formally. I've been getting a lot of practice problems right, but I don't know how much that means."

"Well, lucky for you, I've been studying the secondary school maths curriculum and designing lesson plans this term, so I might actually have some idea of what to do with you. I've assembled a placement test to try to get a sense of what you know and what you still need to work on. Take it and we'll go from there."

Matilda takes a folder out of her rucksack and then removes several pieces of paper stapled together, which she hands to me. I take out a pencil from my rucksack and start working. The first problem reads, "2x + 3 = 7. Find x." That's easy—subtract 3 from each side to get 2x = 4, and then divide by 2 to get x = 2. Simple.

By the fifth algebra problem, I'm on a roll. I feel unstoppable. I'm barely even having to _think_. I feel kind of like a conduit, like maths is just flowing _through_ me. It's almost like my magic, except I don't think I'm sucking mathematical power out of Yorkshire to do it.

I slow down when I get to the geometry section—I'm still a little fuzzy on angles and polygon congruence, although area and volume problems are a breeze. Then I reach a section that keeps referring to "sin," "cos," and "tan." I'm pretty sure this "sin" isn't talking about what Baz and I get up to in my bedroom, and I don't think this "tan" refers to anyone's skin colour, but beyond that I'm pretty lost. I look ahead in the packet and see a bunch of fractions that all seem to be of the form _d/dx_ , and I don't know what to make of that.

I hand the packet to Matilda and tell her that I'm done. She looks up from her own maths textbook—she must have started doing homework while I was taking her test; I was too engrossed to tell. She looks over my work and then up at me. "Well," she says, "if this is really where you are, you weren't kidding. You seem to have algebra down, and you know some geometry, but you're still not all the way there yet, and you didn't touch any of the trigonometry or calculus problems, so I guess we'll start with geometry and go from there."

"Should I keep watching the video tutorials?" I ask.

"If that's really how you learned algebra, they're clearly effective," she replies. "Go ahead, but email me 24 hours before we meet and tell me what you've covered."

"They're American—does that matter?"

"It might a little bit; we don't study other countries' curricula. Maths is pretty universal, though."

I smile. "I like that about maths."

Matilda smiles back. "Me too."

By the end of the month, I've finished geometry. Another month and I've mastered trigonometry. I'm possibly failing my literature course, but I don't care. Maths just feels so good, so right, in a way words never have.

Toward the end of the term, Matilda suggests that I sit for an O-level in maths. She says I can take one by arrangement via the maths department at our university. "We're not done," she tells me. "You need to pass the A-level before taking university maths courses. But you've made _so_ much progress, Simon. I think you could be really good at this."

 **A/N: Reviews, favourites, and follows are all lovely!**


	3. Results

**Disclaimer: Still Rainbow Rowell's.**

Calculus is hard. It takes an entire term of both Khan Academy and tutoring from Matilda, a term in which I take the bare minimum of university courses in order to focus on maths and still wind up staying up late and getting up early trying to beat limits, derivatives, and integrals into my head. Conic sections had nothing on this. And then just when I master integrals and think I'm done, there are Taylor Series and Maclaurin Polynomials and magic-knows- _what_ -else. For the first time since I started trying to learn maths again, it feels like it doesn't fit in my head, like I'm back in Magic Words class trying to transfigure a button into a butterfly and coming up empty.

The lightbulb moments are worth it. When I finally understand derivatives, I dance around the flat singing "Wait for It" from that _Hamilton_ musical Penny's gotten us all obsessed with. _I am inimitable, I am an original_ . . . It feels like going nova, like going off, but I get to stay conscious. It's incredible. Understanding integrals feels the same way. And then with infinite series I wind up proving amazing things, like ½ + ¼ + ⅛ + 1/16+ . . . = 1. It makes me so _happy_ when I finally understand the logic.

I pass the A-level at the end of spring term of my first year of university, and as soon as my results come in Professor Wilson lets me sign up for both Linear Algebra and Discrete Structures in the fall. Professor Wilson is going to be my Linear Algebra professor. He smiles at me as he helps me register for the class. "You've done well this year, Mr. Snow," he says. "If you could master everything from algebra to Taylor Series in a single year, who knows what you'll do next. Could be a Ph D in your future."

I come home after I register and find Baz already in the flat, sitting on the sofa reading over some notes. I let my rucksack fall off my back and collapse onto the sofa next to him. "Baz," I say. "I did it. I really did it."

"You passed?" he asks, glancing up at me from his notes.

"Professor Wilson thinks I could get a Ph D," I reply. "For real, Baz. I'm actually good at something."

Baz sets his notes on the table in front of us. "Snow. You're good at plenty of things. Speaking of which, will you have more time to demonstrate your many talents now that the term is almost over and you're caught up on maths?" He wiggles his eyebrows, and it's all I can do to keep from collapsing into giggles.

"Yes. But _Baz_. Now I'm good at something I can actually _tell_ people about. And it feels so _good_."

"As good as what we get up to in your bedroom?"

I think about it for half a second and then say, "Actually, yes. Better." I haven't tried to talk to Baz much about maths up until now. He's been vaguely jealous of the way I've devoted all of my time to studying, pointing out that if even _he_ can clear time in his schedule, even though he also has to hunt, I should be able to find some time as well. Maybe calling maths better than intimacy is just going to make things worse, but I can't help it; it's true, and I want him to understand my joy.

Baz stares at me. "Really." But his tone isn't jealous now; it's as if something is dawning on him.

"Really," I say.

"You've really found it, then. Your thing."

I nod, solemnly at first and then vigorously.

He pulls me into his arms. "Congratulations, Simon."

I nuzzle into his chest and say, "I'm good at something, Baz. I'm _really_ good at something. It just makes so much _sense_ , and even when it's hard I want to keep going. I want to keep _doing_ this. It's so _good_."

Baz kisses my forehead and plays with my curls. "I'm proud of you."

Penny finds us cuddling on the sofa when she gets home. "Can you boys keep the physical affection to Simon's room, please?" she says. "And Simon, since when do you have spare time for cuddling?"

I look up at Penny without leaving Baz's embrace. "I passed, Penny."

"Oh my Merlin!" she exclaims, joining us on the couch and pulling me out of Baz's arms and into hers. "Simon, that's wonderful!"

"I'm registered for two university maths classes next term, and the head of the maths department thinks I could get a Ph D!"

She stares at me, face inches from mine, brown eyes so wide that her long, curling eyelashes brush the bottoms of her eyebrows. "Simon. That's _amazing_. Only one of my professors has said that to _me_."

She and I just grin at each other for a few seconds, so mentally in sync that I don't feel the need to explain anything else to her. Unlike Baz, Penny's been around for all of my late nights and early mornings; she's seen me beating my head with a book and also dancing around singing "Wait for It." She knows that I feel like I'm going supernova when things are going well, and she knows how frustrated I get when maths doesn't make sense.

After several seconds, Baz pulls me back into his arms, and I cuddle up against him. Penny looks at us and says, "Okay, for once I'm going to let you cuddle in here, since Simon has such exciting news. Anything past cuddling had better be in Simon's room, though."

"Thanks, Penny," I say.

Baz and I cuddle while Penny makes dinner—distinctly burnt lasagna—and after dinner we all scatter to study for our finals. I have fewer finals than Penny or Baz since I cut back on my course load this term to work on maths, so I feel like one of my finals is already finished, but I still need to study.

The next day, though, Penny brings home a chocolate cake and a dozen sour cherry scones from the bakery. The cake says, "Congratulations, Simon—future Ph D!" For all that I can't wait to stuff my face with it, part of me wishes I could hang the cake on my wall instead for when I need encouragement.

"Isn't this counting our chickens before they hatch?" I ask around my first bite of cake.

"Modesty is pointless," Penny retorts, and Baz nods. (They've gotten to be good friends this year, somehow, around all our schedules.) "You're damn good at something, Simon, and we're going to celebrate it, not tiptoe around it."

"You're good at things too," I mumble around my first bite of my second piece of cake.

"Well, yes," Penny says. "I'm the best anthropology student this university has ever seen. But that was to be expected. This is new, and we're celebrating."

"Quickly, though," Baz adds. "The way this microeconomics final is shaping up, I think my professor is trying to murder me."

"Ditto," Penny says. "My sociology final is going to be absolute death."

So we finish shoveling cake into our mouths and I volunteer to clear the dishes, since I have the fewest finals. I try to think about the finals that I _do_ have as I stick the plates in the dishwasher, but all I can think of is what Penny had written on the cake. _Simon Snow—future Ph D._ I can't get over how much I like the sound of that.

 **A/N: I still love reviews, follows, and favourites! There are a couple chapters to go!**


	4. Analysis

**Disclaimer: The characters belong to Rainbow Rowell. One of the ideas in this chapter belongs to Olivia Ballard. I hope I'm remixing both in a creative enough way that this isn't just stealing.**

 **A/N: I race pretty quickly through a lot of time in this chapter. If any of you wish these scenes were told in more detail, please feel free to write a spin-off (and credit me, please). In the spirit of crediting people, full credit to Olivia Ballard for one of the ideas in this chapter. (I won't spoil the chapter by mentioning which one up here.) If you haven't read Olivia's story "American Holiday," I highly,** _ **highly**_ **recommend it.**

Real analysis is the hardest class of my undergraduate career. Every time I think I'm grasping something, it slips back out of my hands. Part of me wants to ring Matilda and have her explain it to me like she did back when I was trying to catch up on trigonometry and calculus, but she's graduated now and is teaching actual students in an actual school, and I feel like I'd be intruding. I've made friends in the maths department now, though I've been taking more maths courses per term than most maths students because I started the program a year late and consequently don't really have a cohort. A couple of my friends, Peter and Emily, are in real analysis with me, at least, and together we can usually work out something about the assignment. When we can't, I go see the professor—Professor Geraldson, my second favourite after Professor Wilson—and ask for help.

Even with the academic community, though, the sheer difficulty of the class gets me down sometimes. Maths was the first thing (other than fistfighting and, like, sucking magic out of everywhere ever) that ever came easily to me, and being good at it became part of how I saw myself basically from the first algebra tutorial. Struggling with maths makes me feel almost like I'm not myself sometimes. Penny, who's wrapping up a dazzling undergraduate career in anthropology while also going along on her father's field visits when she can manage it, somehow finds time to cheer me up, reminding me that I've come a long way from the ignoramus who commented on what "someone like her" was supposed to be named and couldn't get a single spell to work. Baz comforts me too, in his way, usually by pulling me into his arms and kissing me but occasionally by skipping the tenderness and going straight to removing my shirt.

My final year of university is also difficult because I need to be applying to grad schools. Baz urges me to check out the Applied Maths and Statistics programmes at the London School of Economics, since he's going to try for a Ph D in Economics there (" _Dr Pitch_ ," he always says, "don't you like the sound of it?" To which I always reply that he sounds like the worst combination of Frankenstein and his monster. To which he always replies that I love him and I know it). Penny, meanwhile, is trying to get into grad schools in America, since she proposed to Micah last summer and the two of them are rightfully sick of long distance (I have no idea what I would do if Baz and I were apart for that long). It pains me to think of her across the ocean from me after eleven years of us being inseparable, but Baz is staying in England and I'm staying with Baz.

Baz and I both get accepted to the London School of Economics, by what I'd call a miracle if I hadn't seen Baz put all the luck spells on both of our computers while we applied, and if I hadn't also seen my own grades, which were, yes, _good_ for the first time in my life. We get engaged the week after our acceptances come in and get married a week after Penny and Micah, the summer before starting grad school. We sneak maths and economics into our vows: I promise to love him until the end of aleph-omega, the largest named type of infinity (yes, there are types of infinity) and Baz promises to love me in sickness and in health, for richer or for power, in boom and in bust, in recession and in stagflation, as long as we both shall live. We grin at each other across the altar like the teenagers we used to be but no longer are, me loving him for his knowledge of business cycles and him loving me for my knowledge of infinity and both of us loving each other for hundreds of reasons besides.

When we get married, I become a Grimm-Pitch. In the end, it's a simple solution to a problem that at first looked insoluble. We agreed right off that double hyphenation would be ridiculous, and Baz said he'd be staked before he'd stop being a Pitch. For a while, we toyed with the idea of dropping the Grimm part, since Baz usually just went by Pitch anyway, but his relationship with his father was precarious enough already. So we were stuck until I suggested taking Baz's name. After all, I didn't have a middle name (something that Baz found endlessly strange, but I would remind him that I was literally _found on a doorstep with my name written on my arm_ , so the lack of a middle name really wasn't the weird part of the story), so I could easily move Snow to the middle and tack Grimm-Pitch onto the end without much hassle. We spent awhile wondering if it would be confusing for both of us to be Mr Grimm-Pitch (and later _Dr_ Grimm-Pitch), but finally we decided that it doesn't matter too much since we're in different fields. So there we are, after the wedding, Mr and Mr Grimm-Pitch, greeting guests and grinning, and I've never been so happy.

It's on our wedding night—the first night we're actually able to breathe after a long stretch of applications, exams, and wedding planning—that we finally talk about children seriously for the first time. We're lying next to each other in our bed in the new one-bedroom flat we've just rented together, now that Penny has moved to America and is no longer my roommate. We're still wearing our tuxes from the wedding, having collapsed into the bed after kicking off our shoes (well, _I_ kicked _mine_ off; Baz untied his), and now we're too exhausted to move. A little under the influence, perhaps, but still thinking straight for the most part. (We've gotten drunk together before. It's honestly not as much fun as getting lightly buzzed.)

"I've been talking to Penny about children," Baz says as we lie there. "She suggested surrogacy. She's got eggs frozen, since she isn't sure when she'll get around to having children, and she'd be willing to donate some eggs to the cause, if we wouldn't feel too weird about her being the biological mother of our children. You would need to donate sperm, obviously, since I can't reproduce—or shouldn't, anyway—and then we could pick a surrogate together and voila, a child." He's this articulate up until the point where he's well and truly hammered. It's infuriating and endearing at the same time.

"Why are _you_ the one Penny talked to?" is all I can think to say.

"Because I plan," says Baz curtly. "How do you feel about it?"

" _When?_ "

"When did we talk about it or when would we have children?" Baz asks.

"Both," I say.

"We talked about it a couple of months ago, and we've exchanged a few emails on the topic since then. We'd have children when you and I decide we're ready."

"I don't think we could handle children while we're still in school. Or even when we're just starting our careers. I know the Bunces did, but I can't even imagine that."

"That's what I was thinking, too," Baz replies. "Which makes me think that you should maybe freeze some sperm. The older people get, the more their cells divide, and cell division leaves room for mistakes and mutations. There's a higher risk of birth defects the older the parents get, and given how long it could be before we've finished our doctorates and gotten settled in our careers, it might be good to save some young cells now to avoid some of that risk."

I look at Baz. "You know you're a control freak, right?"

"My suggestion is in the best interests of our future child!"

"I _know_ , and I'll probably go along with your plan once I get over the shock of you and Penny planning _our children_ without me, but at the same time—life _is_ risk, Baz. I know that as well as anyone. And sometimes we can mitigate it and you're probably right that in this case we should, but also—sometimes you need to accept that things might go wrong. And I want to be damn sure you're ready for that if we're going to have a child, because children are little balls of uncertainty. Especially any child who's in any way related to _me_."

Baz sighs. "I know. Believe me. And I don't know if I'm ready now, but I'll make sure I am before we actually go through with anything." He's quiet for a while and then says, "If we have a girl, her name will be Natasha."

"Of course," I reply. I don't remember thinking really concretely of children before, but this idea doesn't feel new to me. "And I assume a boy would be Tyrannus?"

Baz makes a face. "Ugh, _why_?"

"You've said it was a family name. Aren't we trying to carry on traditions?"

"Not _that_ one. No _thank you_. Much as I loved my mother, _nobody_ loves that name."

I think about lying, because I'm supposed to love everything about Baz, but I decide against it. "Yeah, okay. What would you name a boy, then?"

Baz laughs, I think mostly from exhaustion. "Why are we trying to figure this out _now_? We've got _years_."

"I just took real analysis," I reply. "I've got into the habit of analysing things." Baz doesn't laugh, so I explain the joke: "I'm kidding. This isn't what real analysis is about at all."

Baz rolls toward me on the bed. "Do we _have_ to think anymore? Because I'd rather not. Especially since you've been looking so incredibly dishy all day and I haven't gotten to so much as snog you breathless, let alone undress you."

I chuckle. "I love it when _you're_ the one whose capacity for thinking expires first."

"Oh, don't go getting a swelled head," Baz says, reaching over with one hand to tug at my bow tie.

I smile at him. "With you around? Never."

 **A/N: Reviews and favourites are lovely! The idea I took from Olivia Ballard was using Penny's eggs and finding a surrogate. Once again, I'd very much encourage you to check out the work that idea came from: "American Holiday." With regards to this story, there's one chapter left and it should be coming in a few days!**


	5. Discussion

**Disclaimer: SnowBaz belongs to Rainbow Rowell.**

 **A/N: As this story comes to a close, I want to give a huge shout-out to all the education majors, math majors, and Anglophiles in my life. I couldn't have written this story without all of them.**

Getting Ph Ds takes five gruelling years for both of us. I'm studying ordinary differential equations and Baz is studying global finance, and that's about as much as we understand of each other's fields. We really should understand more, especially since Baz sometimes comes home complaining that all he's doing is maths, but our research silos us into narrower and narrower subfields, and we both have trouble seeing beyond those. It's a stressful time of both of our lives, and many days I miss having an enemy as all-consuming and unpredictable as the Humdrum, because then no one could possibly hold me accountable for planning anything or, honestly, having my shit together at all. Plus, I think I survived the entirety of my teenage years on adrenaline, and now that's just not an option. Maths breakthroughs are exciting, but they're not the same kind of exciting as having just outrun a worseger or killed a dragon.

The constant low-level stress and frequent late nights make both of us snippy, if not worse. It also makes me (though obviously not Baz) frequently sick. Baz's healing spells usually do the trick and have me better within a few hours of when I tell him I feel awful, but several times I develop bad enough coughs, ear infections, or sinus infections that I need to see Dr. Wellbelove (I can't see Normal doctors since I still have wings and a tail). Baz is endlessly good about this—when I'm really sick is the one time when he will never, ever criticize me or pick a fight with me. Instead, he drives me to Dr. Wellbelove's, rubs my back, makes me soup, and even plays violin in the other room sometimes if I think it will help.

Other times, though, our apartment is not a scene of domestic bliss. Our worst fights happen while we're getting our doctorates. There's a day four months in when we have an hour-long screaming match over who was responsible for buying groceries, the day we come home and realise there's nothing with which to make dinner. Two years in, we have such a big fight about money—we're living on small stipends that I would love to have supplemented with Grimm-Pitch money, and Baz isn't willing to broach the topic with his father and thinks we ought to just live within our means—that Baz stays with friends for a few days and at one point even brings up the word "divorce." That's all it takes for me to panic, take back everything I've said, and beg him to move back in, which he does, and within a few days it's like nothing ever happened. Other than those two instances, we mostly manage to keep our marriage on good footing, even when we're both miserable.

We're not always miserable, though. There are days when we have breakthroughs in our research, and those nights we dance together (Baz is slowly, _slowly_ teaching me to dance properly) and take a break from our work to make cake or brownies or—best of all—scones. Sometimes those nights we add a bit to our sleep deprivation by making out like we're teenagers and having fun with slowly undressing each other before descending into more intense forms of intimacy. I can tell, on those nights, that our marriage isn't dying, and that makes me happy.

Writing our dissertations is a domestic rollercoaster. It feels like, every time something goes right for Baz, something goes wrong for me, and vice versa. While I'm having writer's block, Baz is cranking out 3,000 words a day. While Baz can't find a single fact he's looking for, all of my calculations lead gloriously in the direction I knew they would. But finally, somehow, we both have completed dissertations to defend by the end of our fifth year.

The dissertation defense feels like fighting a dragon, followed by a worseger, followed by a horde of flibertigibbets, followed by a goblin. And worse, I don't have the option of going off, waking up after the session ends smelling of smoke and somehow having accomplished everything expected of me. No, I have to keep standing there and explaining my calculations and formulae and the patterns I've found and the methods I chose, all to a panel of judges with faces as expressionless as dinner plates. Baz warned me about this—his defense was a week before mine—but nothing could have prepared me for the exhaustion of what is essentially a three-hour oral exam aimed at poking holes in everything you've done in the last three years.

Yet I survive. Baz and I graduate on the same day, though in separate ceremonies as we belong to separate departments, and we quite literally disrobe one another when we get back to our apartment. Two weeks later, we fly to America to watch Penny graduate from Harvard with a doctorate in anthropology. Shortly thereafter we start our jobs—me as part of a team designing the next generation supercomputer ("So if you can't _be_ the most powerful thing in the world," Baz said when I got the job offer, "you have to _work on_ the most powerful thing in the world?") and Baz as an assistant manager at a mutual fund. I worry for a while that Baz is going to burn out in the world of high finance (with his flammability and predilection toward starting fires, that could be bad), but he seems okay as long as he can play the violin a couple times a week after work, and as long as we make use of our time in the bedroom.

We're about a year into our careers before we even get around to talking about children again. We're both working at least 60 hours a week, if not 80 (still better than writing a dissertation, though). Luckily, we have similar schedules, so we see each other for early breakfasts, late dinners, sleeping, and the occasional weekend outing, and we're still in love. It's one weekend when we're both actually free from work, as we're walking along the Thames holding hands, that I turn to Baz and say, "So, children."

"I've been thinking about them," Baz replies. "We could never have them on this schedule. I know there are live-in nannies, but I refuse." Within three sentences his voice has gone from light to clenched, tight, maybe even close to tears.

I look at him, at his pressed-together whitening lips and his flinty grey eyes. "Love, are you okay?"

Baz squeezes my hand tightly enough to cut off the circulation. "I want to _be a father_ , Simon," he replies. "I want—I want a life where I can actually parent. And that's what I want to do. Parenting."

"Okay," I say, rubbing his thumb with mine. "Jesus, Baz, all you had to do was tell me. Were you ever planning on telling me?"

" _When_?" Baz returns. "At breakfast we're not awake enough to function, and at dinner we're past the point of exhaustion, and when we _are_ both awake at the same time and capable of doing anything I want to savour the moment, not figure out the future."

I guide us to a bench and sit him down. "But clearly you have wants that involve the future."

"Well, _yes_ —don't you?"

"As in, I know I want you to be a part of it, and I'm glad that you almost certainly will be? Of course. But I'm not the planning one; you know that."

Baz leans forward, elbows on his knees, and looks out at the river. "Do you want children, Simon?"

"I think so," I reply. "I think we need to talk more about it before we make a decision."

"Do you like your job? I feel like I don't even know how you're doing anymore."

"Yes, I like my job. Rather a lot. Do you like yours?"

"It's . . . fine." Baz turns to me, and his armour falls away. "Simon?" He sounds so vulnerable. "Would you hate me if I quit my job so we could start a family? I know I'm making more than you, but you're making more than enough to cover our necessities, and if I weren't working then we wouldn't have to pay for full-time child care . . ."

"Is that what you want?" I ask.

"Is it okay with you for me to want that?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I just—we haven't talked about who's supposed to be the breadwinner, or how you feel about full-time parents, or really any of it. And I don't want you to be ashamed of me for—"

I don't let him finish. " _Basilton_." I never call him that. "If you want this, we can make it work. Full stop. I wasn't raised in a family; I don't have strong opinions one way or another about how to set one up. I'm confident you'll make an excellent father, and if that's what you want to do then that's what you'll do."

"Simon . . . I love you, but you said two minutes ago that you weren't sure you wanted children. You can't say yes to children just because I want them."

I sigh and look out at the water. "You're right. We need to talk more about this. But thank you for telling me how you feel. Let me know the next time you want something this badly, will you? I want to be there for you. I want to _help_."

Baz tips his head onto my shoulder. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

 **A/N: I tried to write the surrogacy process and the children, but those are experiences I've never had and everything I wrote about them turned out to be rubbish, so the story ends here. I continue to appreciate favourites, and thanks for reading!**


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